CELEBRATING DIFFERENCESI don’t “do” bumper stickers, but I admit to being an avid bumper sticker reader. Back a couple of years ago my favorite was, “BARK LESS, WAG MORE.” I like to think of myself as more of a wagger than a barker; however, there are times when barking is the sensible response. I once lived in a neighborhood with a dog down the street that barked all the time; and that animal, which we seldom saw, was hated by everybody except the guy who lived by himself in the house and left the dog alone for long stretches of time. The dog that lived with me at the time was such a wagger that he would have welcomed a burglar into our house and shown him where the good stuff was kept.

I got a thoughtful e-mail from my friend Carol Holmgren yesterday which has got me rethinking wagging and barking. In the wake of recent media attention to the spate of suicides by emotionally wounded adolescents, Carol suggested we form a “bark society” whose purpose would be to speak out against bullying and other practices and attitudes which wound young people. She said, “We could make prints of your bark pictures and sell them for the support of programs that address the needs of adolescents who are emotionally wounded.” She went on to say some nice things about my recent tree-bark photographs. In her e-mail Carol prefaced her note with the words, “I’m not kidding...” And I’m not kidding, either. Carol is onto something.

So... Let’s form Carol’s BARK SOCIETY. Besides selling photographs to raise money for a good cause, I like the idea that we can encourage good teachers, parents, pastors, relatives and neighbors everywhere to reassure and help troubled young people. For all kinds of reasons some kids become convinced that they are unattractive and inadequate and unacceptable, especially unacceptable to themselves. We can support organizations that affirm young people who are “different.” We can join the effort to convince troubled teenagers that life will get better. We can encourage churches and schools to actively affirm young people whose appearance is different or whose way of being human is different, leaving them exposed to shunning by peers and to bullying and other hateful behaviors. We can “bark” until organizations and institutions in our communities become more sensitive to “all God’s children.” We can lobby for the removal of statements like, "the practice of homosexuality (is) incompatible with Christian teaching" in church documents like the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline.

(Take a look at the BLOG by Dr. Brian Mustanski, an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Juvenile Research) http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-sexual-continuum/201010/it-gets-better-video-campaign-featuring-hundreds-videos-people-stan